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While Evan Spiegel and the team are gearing up for Snapchat's IPO, the industry continues to be speculating on whether or not they will have a future. Since this is not the future and we have to be mindful of the present, here are a few personal lessons that I have learned for advertising on Snapchat. Before we get into it, here are some stats pulled from Marketing Land:

Snapchat ended 2016 with 161 million daily active users.

More than 1 billion snaps featuring location-based filters, or “geo-filters,” are viewed daily.

More than one-third daily users "play" with lenses every day.

The Mission

The experiment was to create brand awareness for the launch of our new product and our product aligns well with Snapchat's younger demographic. Because we were starting with zero online influence, we wanted to get as many eyes on our brand with the least amount of money spent. This made Snapchat a great platform to market on.

One part of Snapchat's advertising relies on the use of geolocation. So, we needed a large population in a small area (to keep the costs down).

We were contemplating where we could get a lot of activity in such a small area that fit our product and then BOOM! Football! We ended up targeting college football games where there were rivalries and a lot of media attention.

What we learned

One issue that we didn't anticipate was the fact that stadium geo-filters are REALLY expensive! So, what's the single best thing to do while you're waiting for the game to start? Tailgate! We focused our marketing efforts on the parking lots of the stadiums and the designated tailgate areas. Parking lots reduced the cost drastically. $5 compared to $5,000 is a no-brainer.

To test our message, we ended up creating multiple styles of geo-filters and found that the simple branded filters were used more. So for example, the college team's logo with their mantra and our brand.

TL;DR

Total cost of experiment: $216.25

Total area covered: 572,225 sq ft.

Total views: 215,978

Best geo-filter was used 1,230 times, viewed 98,630, and cost $14.34

Find locations with a large gathering and younger demographic.

Make sure the demographic fits your message.

Make your message clear.

Experiment!

Even though Facebook and Instagram are basically copying Snapchat, SC still has a grasp on the younger demographic and their advertising prices are a lot lower than some of the other platforms. So for a fraction of the cost, you can experiment with your brand's message and not lose your shirt.